Issue:The APU is displaying generally poor performance in more graphic-intensive applications. Streaming video and The Walking Dead game seem to run fine, but a more intensive game like LA Noire barely runs even at the lowest settings, despite the game being almost 2.5 years old. Fire Strike returns a terrible score of 846, which is at least half what I expected from some benchmarks I've seen posted online.

Ideally I'd love to get adequate performance out of the chip - nothing high-end, but I'd at least like to be able to run 2+ year-old games at medium or medium-high settings - I wouldn't think that too much to ask from a brand-new APU. If there's a way to do this with the existing hardware, that's great. If not, I have an Nvidia 460 GTX I could install in the system. My issue there is that I don't know what needs to be uninstalled as far as AMD video drivers go. I know there is the standard uninstall utility, but this being an APU, with that bundled "all-in-one" driver, I don't know if I should uninstall everything. When I look at the uninstall utility I see 10 items:

Some of those choices are obvious, others not so much - like the SMBus driver or USB 3.0 driver. I don't want to just blanket-uninstall those if they're needed by the MB or CPU. If I do need to install the 460 card, which items should I uninstall in order to remove the necessary video components?

As far as I can find, there is no such thing as an HD 8750D. The A8-6600K contains HD 8570D which according to Passmark is only slightly better than my HD 6620G in an A8-3500M.

HD 5770-----1682

HD 8570D----600

HD 6620G----563

If you're switching to Nvidia then you could probably safely remove everything AMD related except for the 2 USB 3.0 drivers and the SmBus driver. Don't quote me on that though since I'm not sure how discrete Nvidia cards get along with AMD APU's and how you would disable the graphics built into the APU. A better solution would be to get a more powerful discrete AMD card.

You're right, Dch, that was a typo on my part; I went ahead and fixed it in my post.

I could do the whole "dual-graphics" thing, but AMD states it will only work with up to a 6670, and if I'm reading Newegg right the best that will do is give me another gig or so of DDR3 memory. The only way I think to get decent video performance will be to disable the onboard (which I think is easily done in the BIOS) and go 100% with a nicer discrete card. Can't really afford to pick up an AMD one, though, especially since I have this pretty nice 460, so I guess I'll have to take my chances.

I agree with you that everything aside from the SMBus and USB seems video-related and are the best candidates to go, so I'll roll the dice on those, and just hope a system restore point will be enough to rescue me if it goes belly up.

I am running an A8-6600k with a Radeon HD 6670 and dual graphics enabled. The CPU performance isn't stellar, but I've had no problems with graphics. If you're lucky you could find a 6670. It will probably be refurb or open box since it's been replaced with the new R7series therefor will probably be cheap too!

Originally posted by: doesntevenmater I am running an A8-6600k with a Radeon HD 6670 and dual graphics enabled. The CPU performance isn't stellar, but I've had no problems with graphics. If you're lucky you could find a 6670. It will probably be refurb or open box since it's been replaced with the new R7series therefor will probably be cheap too!

Thanks, but to be honest with you, I don't even care any more. I've been running with the Steam streaming beta for the last few days, and it's been nearly perfect. I moved LA Noire upstairs to my gaming rig and streamed it down to the A8 at max graphics with zero lag. I've even spent several hours playing Splinter Cell Blacklist and Metro Last Light on the highest settings and have been getting 55-60 FPS 90% of the time - all over my wireless LAN. It's been pretty amazing.

The A8, even with the graphics problems I described, has been fine for Netflix, DVDs, and Windows Media Center, and now with Steam streaming I can play AAA graphics hounds from the comfort of my couch whenever I want. So there's no longer any need to upgrade further. Ain't technology grand?